


funerary hymns

by AndreaLyn



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 14:12:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5747452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I called him Slip, but he was the best friend I had. He died on Jakku, when we were storming the village to search for the map.” Just like that, Poe’s skin starts to get clammy and he feels the blood drain from his face. “He was shot, blaster-fire…”</i>
</p>
<p>Until Finn, stormtroopers had always been nameless, faceless things to Poe. Confessing that he'd taken Slip from Finn is hard enough, but even harder when you're telling a man you might be half in love with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	funerary hymns

It takes ages for the snow from Starkiller to dissipate completely from the X-Wings. Slowly, the crystallized flakes begin to break apart and vanish. In that time, wounds are treated and stitched, heartaches are tended to (but not mended) and Finn sleeps while the medics tend to his seared back.

Rey and Poe wait with him in turns and together, always lingering longer with each passing day that he stays asleep.

Eventually, Poe starts to ebb away because there are other things to tend to. He has responsibilities and duties, but General Organa knows how important it is to him to check in on Finn’s progress and she makes sure he always has time for him. He feels like he owes Finn a life debt and he _knows_ deep down in his heart that there’s more to Finn’s story than this.

Days pass to weeks. Rey says her goodbyes to Finn and Poe takes up her post in waiting when she leaves to finish his mission. 

Poe’s been raised to be hopeful and devoted; both talents are now being put to the test. With Finn so far (despite being so close), Poe replays the time they’ve spent together and finds himself carving himself out little moments from their history to obsess over and find worth in. He thinks of Finn’s smile when Poe had promised to get him off the Finalizer and of the fight on Takodana. He thinks of holding Finn in his arms when they reunited and bundling him back up in Poe’s jacket.

He thinks of all the things that could be, but aren’t, and with more time and distance, Poe starts to feel more and more connected, strange as that sounds.

Rey returns from her mission with Luke Skywalker at her side. By that point, Poe’s fairly close to being inseparable from Finn’s side. It feels a little like he’s put weight and worth into their connection, but he’s sure he’s not imagining all of it.

The trouble is, he sort of needs Finn to be awake if he wants to see if this thing can go both ways. Days and days eke by, with no promise, and Poe starts to wonder if Finn’s ever going to wake up or whether he’s escaped the First Order only to go out with a whimper.

It’s relief, then, that finds him a week later when he returns to medical after another day’s flight drills and finds a frantic medical bay, seeing the sheen of Rey’s tears first from across the room. He nearly bolts in a panic, but stops when he sees the brimming smile behind her hands, hiding a laugh on her lips as Finn starts to sit up so very slowly.

He’s awake.

He’s _alive_.

Poe exhales happily, setting his helmet down on a nearby table so he can join the happy throng. The mood in the clinic is buoyant and a great relief from the grief that’s been plaguing them. Poe takes that evening to bask in Rey’s smiles and her stories about training with Luke, watching how she eats with both hands and talks with her mouth full. Finn watches her and holds onto her hand and Poe’s like a lifeline, absorbing all the news he’s missed.

They spend days together like this, curled inside their private world, sharing histories and futures while Poe introduces them to the foods of the Resistance base and brings around his pilots to introduce them. Right here, the war against the First Order is a galaxy away. Rey’s learning about a life spent with others and Finn is learning how to be an individual.

Poe’s just giddy to be a part of it, this close to Finn and Rey (who’s a great girl, just not his type of girl seeing as he’s never leaned that way).

The happiness only lasts for so long, though, before reality comes crashing back in.

“Commander,” the General interrupts their daily session, in which Rey and Poe fill in the gaps of what Finn’s missed. “Do you have a second to talk about the monument?”

Poe stares at Rey and Finn and the bubble of happiness they provide. Here, he can ignore the war going on outside and for once in his life, the Resistance isn’t first and foremost on his mind. He has no idea how the hell that happened, but has a feeling it has to do with how persistently wonderful Rey and Finn are.

He excuses himself and stands in the shadows of the hallway outside medical as he and General Organa discuss death to its very details. Poe checks over the list of names – of _his people_ , of people he’s lost, and there’s no misgivings in his mind as to why he wants to ignore this war when he’s just lost so many friends to it – and makes sure they’re all spelled right. On the top of the list sits Han Solo’s name and when Poe opens his mouth to comment about it and offer the General his sympathy, her curt look cuts him off.

He knows that she’ll talk about it when she wants to, so Poe confirms that his remaining crew will be at the ceremony in their dress gear and that training will begin as soon as it can after.

When he returns, not even the happy smiles waiting for him are enough to bolster his mood. He aches with grief and it sinks him like a stone, struggling not to let it show on his face. “What was that?” Rey asks.

“The memorial service is going to be at the end of the week,” Poe says quietly.

“Memorial service?” Finn asks, eyes flashing with confusion.

“For the people we lost.”

Poe isn’t sure that he wants to probe this topic because he already knows what the First Order does when they lose people. They’re bundled up like kindling and left behind. Numbers suffice and they’re reported and then forgotten. Finn’s probably never seen people’s lives honored before, not like this, and it aches to think that he’s going to get so many chances to see it.

“When we lose Resistance members, we create a memorial for them and hold a vigil,” Poe explains. “So that their passing isn’t forgotten.”

Understanding dawns on Finn’s face and he curls the blankets in his hands. “Do you think maybe they’d let me add a name?” he asks.

“I’m sure they would after everything you’ve done,” Rey says, rubbing his back. “Who?”

“I called him Slip,” Finn says, “but he was the best friend I had. He died on Jakku, when we were storming the village to search for the map.” Just like that, Poe’s skin starts to get clammy and he feels the blood drain from his face. “He was shot, blaster-fire…”

Poe barely stops himself from lurching forward, shock suddenly eating him from head to toe. He hears Rey speaking faintly, telling Finn that she’s sure the General would be happy to add his friend to the vigil so he can properly be honored, but the more time that passes, the less Poe hears. His hearing goes tinny and he fumbles to his feet, mumbling an excuse about needing to leave.

He trips on BB-8 on his way out, pressing his back to the wall the minute he’s clear of Rey and Finn’s confused looks, staring down at the droid beeping and wondering if he’s okay.

He’s not.

He’s a murderer.

Poe pushes himself away and knows he needs to get out of there before he starts to think of all the other stormtroopers he’s done away with and how until he’d met Finn, he hadn’t even stopped to think about it. They were all faceless, nameless things, right up until the moment he’d gone and given one of them a name and a future.

He thinks about how he can’t begin to imagine his life without Finn and it’s all he can do not to splinter with this new crisis of conscience, wondering if Slip would’ve helped him out of the Finalizer alongside Finn.

(And he hates himself, just a little, for being glad that Finn’s here without him, because that means Poe doesn’t have to fight as hard for his attention)

He pushes himself off the wall, knowing that he needs to get out of the public eye before someone wanders along and wonders why it looks like Poe’s seen a ghost. Even though normally he heads out to his X-Wing to tinker, right now he doesn’t think he could bear a normal conversation and he heads back to his room.

Unfortunately, while most people know Poe well enough to know a closed door is a ‘keep out’ sign, when you’re half a Jedi and can sense discord in the air, those little invisible signs don’t work so well. 

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Rey doesn’t bother to knock, but she does close Poe’s door behind her to give them some privacy. “I’d say that was mad, but the General assures me it’s not a foreign concept. Have you?”

“Not exactly,” Poe replies, wiping a broad palm over his face. “You know how Finn was telling us about the battle on Jakku?”

“Right,” she agrees. “The one where he decided to fight against his training.”

“After he lost his best friend,” Poe says. “After he lost Slip.”

Rey stares at him, waiting. He can see the little lines of worry on her face and Poe isn’t an idiot – he knows how this works, knows that Rey can sense something’s off, but he’s only grateful that she’s not about to go into his head to get it.

He’s not sure he could stand anyone else in his head without permission ever again.

“Rey, I killed him.”

“Who?”

“Slip,” Poe admits, fraught with guilt. “That was my blaster fire. I was trying to cover BB-8’s escape. He’s dead because of me.”

Rey’s expression gives way to sympathy and she steps forward to sit beside him. They stay that way, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, and neither of them says a thing.

“Lots of people have died trying to fight the First Order,” Rey finally speaks up, practical and calm. “Those pilots chasing Finn and I on Jakku? They might very well have been Finn’s old friends and we wouldn’t have known it. And on Starkiller? If we let the weight of the dead sit on our shoulders, we’d never get up again.”

Poe appreciates what she’s doing, but he’s having a problem with the faceless many and the now-named one. “They weren’t Finn’s best friend. I saw the blood on Finn’s helmet,” he realizes, now. That had been Finn, cradling his dead friend on a wasteland planet, taken from him by some Resistance scum. “I killed his friend. How the hell is he ever going to forgive me?”

It’s not even a question of whether he’s going to tell Finn. He has to know the truth.

“He’ll understand,” Rey says.

She’s still so hopeful. Poe’s an optimist and tries to be positive with every single second of the day, but Rey has a childish hope about her that he envies. “I don’t know if he will,” he says. “I don’t know if he should,” he adds. “And I don’t know if my heart can take it if he doesn’t.”

“You like him,” Rey says quietly. “I can see that. I can _feel_ it.”

“You don’t mind?”

“I love him,” Rey says considerately. “Only, I want exactly what we have now. I want the warmth of the three of us together and the security and the promise of no more lonely nights. I’m not sure I like it when things get too close, too intimate, so I don’t know if I want something more” she says warily, giving Poe an uneasy look. “Is that normal?”

“Oh, babe, of course it is,” Poe insists, eyes widening in mild horror to think of a world where Rey’s been raised to think it might not be. “You’re completely normal.” He runs his hands over his thighs. “I don’t think he’s ever gonna reciprocate a thing after I tell him.”

“How could you have known?” she demands. “You were on a mission. You did what you had to.”

“I hope he sees it the same as you.”

Rey lingers at his door, a considerate look on her face. “There is the possibility of not telling him,” she says, sounding calm and practical. “He would never have to know.”

“I’d always know.” It’s not an option for Poe. 

Rey seems to understand, nodding and giving him an encouraging smile. “Tell me how it goes after? Though, I suspect I’ll be able to tell from a single look at your face.” When she leaves, the silence is deafening and Poe is forced to stay alone with his own thoughts. 

He puts off talking to Finn for a whole twelve hours, but eventually figures out that Finn notices when he’s being avoided. Even though he really shouldn’t be out of bed for too long, Poe’s startled to find himself confronted by a wildly frustrated Finn at his door when he’s getting ready for flight drills the next morning. 

Poe tucks his helmet under his arm and stares at Finn warily. “Does Rey know you’re up?”

“She’s the one who pushed me to find you. She said you had something to tell me?”

Well, so much for not having to tell Finn the truth. It looks like Rey’s done an about-face and now is of the opinion that Finn ought to know. Poe thinks this is possibly the worst time, but if he lets this simmer and stew, there’s a real chance Rey might tell him. He glances down at BB-8, who’s staring up at him with concern, the rapid beeping a strain of language that says he needs to tell Finn.

“Tell ‘em I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he instructs BB-8, who rolls off to give them their privacy. 

Days’ worth of worry has piled up in Poe, but he’s an expert at smiling and looking like nothing’s bothering him. Apart from a Sith Lord he prefers not to think about, Poe’s trained to withstand the worst torture anyone can conceive. And yet, standing here with Finn, he feels sweat prick on his forehead and he becomes hyper-aware of his mouth and hands, all of a sudden wary of blurting out the truth.

“You should close the door,” Poe says calmly. “I don’t think we want to be interrupted for this.”

Finn stares at him warily, but closes the door. When he turns back around, Poe’s heart practically shatters because Finn’s got this hopeful look on his face, like he’s waiting for something good to come out of Poe’s mouth.

“Rey said that I should talk to you,” Finn starts, staring down at his hands, “and I thought maybe it was because she knew how I felt…”

This can’t be happening.

Poe’s frozen in place, struck by the fact that Finn is standing there talking about how he feels for Poe, but it’s all going to shatter once the truth is out. He can’t let this get any farther. “Finn, stop!” Poe cuts him off. “Let me talk. Okay? Trust me. I don’t think you’re gonna want to finish what you’re saying once you hear what I have to say.”

“Poe,” Finn says, “What’s going on?”

“Your friend Slip,” Poe starts, knowing that there’s no easy way around this. He needs to get straight and to the point otherwise it won’t happen at all. “Finn, that was my blaster laying down cover-fire to get BB-8 out of there. I think…” He closes his eyes tightly. He doesn’t need to deal in possibilities when he knows the truth. “I’m the one that killed him.”

When he opens his eyes, the look of betrayal and pain on Finn’s face is enough to make Poe wish it was still hiding behind a helmet, just so he wouldn’t have to see this much fractured grief on someone’s face, especially someone he’s grown to love.

When the silence grows and Finn doesn’t keep going about his feelings for Poe, he lets out a knowing laugh that it won’t be coming, blinking back the tears in his eyes as he thinks of his noble sabotage. 

“I told you that you wouldn’t want to keep going.”

“You killed him.”

“Yeah,” Poe says, thinking again about all the faceless soldiers that have fallen in the name of protecting the galaxy and how he knows it’s the right thing, only now that he’s met Finn, he’s not so sure. “Finn, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t,” Finn cuts him off sharply. “I need to go.”

He leaves, and Poe’s left alone without even getting to hear about Finn’s feelings for him. He grabs his helmet and takes a moment to compose himself, knowing that he’s got a duty to fulfill and a little heartbreak never stopped General Organa, so why should it stop him?

Finn doesn’t speak to him, after that.

Poe isn’t sure he blames him, but he’s finding it difficult to cope with the space Finn has left in his absence.

* * *

Without Finn’s presence, the days stretch longer and longer until Poe feels as if all his hope is bleeding out of him and he’s going to be blamed for his mistake without a chance to make up for it. He knows he had to do it to save his own skin and give BB-8 a chance, but it matters to Finn because Slip had mattered to Finn. 

It’s when Poe’s given up hope of being forgiven that Finn turns up on his doorstep, looking awful. Poe’s not exactly in great shape himself, but he’s been leaning on the squadron and work to keep his mind off it.

He’s not sure Finn has that apart from Rey and she’s busy with her own training.

“Hi,” Finn says finally. 

“Do you want to come in?” Poe offers, trying to bask and collect everything he can from Finn, just in case this is all he’ll get. He can feel the hope building in him, which he attempts to tamp down because this could just be Finn showing up to shout at him now that the numbness of his grief has passed. When Finn agrees, Poe leans back and closes the door behind him.

Poe sits on the edge of his bunk while Finn lingers by the sink, neither of them saying anything or making eye contact.

“On Takodana, I killed old allies and fought friends,” Finn says, shifting and looking uncomfortable. “I had to. They would’ve killed me. I ate with them, grew up with some of them, and they were my friends, but it was me or them.”

Poe’s got a hopeful feeling about whether this is going, but doesn’t want to step on Finn’s train of thought and potentially ruin it all.

“So I started to wonder what the difference was,” Finn says. “And it wasn’t a great feeling. Gods, it wasn’t a good feeling,” Finn goes on, looking miserable, “because after you told me it was you that killed Slip, I had to go back and ask myself why I was so mad when I did the same thing to someone else’s best friend in the Order when I was fighting for my life to get out of there and then again on Takodana and the base. And then I had to ask myself if Slip were alive, would I have made it out of there? And I don’t think I would have.”

He still sounds unsure, but it’s not for Poe to decide whether or not this would’ve made a difference to Finn’s decisions.

“When he grabbed for me and my goggles went red with his blood, it was me seeing the world for the first time. I don’t know if I can forgive you for killing him, but I can understand,” Finn says. “And more than that, I think that I can even appreciate the shock it gave me. Thinking of the choice I made, it’s not all because of Slip, but he helped. So maybe, maybe I came around to thinking that everything happens for a reason.”

Poe stares at Finn with aching fondness, because that means their meeting had happened for a reason, that everything that’s brought them to here has been meant to happen.

“That day, when I came to talk to you, I wanted to tell you that I was starting to wake up in this new way, a way I always knew existed, but never thought I’d get to experience,” Finn says carefully. “And Poe, I still don’t know how I feel about this whole mess, but I know that if I don’t take the opportunity to act on this, I’m never gonna feel like I really got out. I’ll still be living in the shadow of what they taught us.”

“What are you saying?” Poe asks, not willing to make assumptions right now.

“You and Rey are the best friends I’ve got. I don’t want to lose out on that. And I don’t think I want to stop feeling the things I’ve started feeling for you,” Finn confesses. “I know that you feel guilty and sorry for what you did on Jakku. You’re a good man, Poe Dameron,” he echoes Poe’s earlier words to Finn. “You’re just as human as the rest of us.”

In anyone else’s words, that might sound like mediocrity, but Finn hasn’t been allowed to be anything more than a soldier for so long that it makes Poe’s eyes go cloudy with pride and sadness to hear Finn accept that he’s as human as the rest of them.

“We put his name on the monument,” Poe says, when the silence stretches uncomfortably longer than he knows what to do with. “Slip. His name, it’s there, not the numbers.”

“Thank you,” Finn says, nodding as if he’s finally put something to right.

“I’d do anything to make you happy, Finn,” Poe says, trying to say the right words. “I built up this epic of a man while you were asleep. I put him on a pedestal and started falling in love with his kindness and his bravery and his humanity, but I think maybe I wasn’t so far off the mark and maybe the idea I had of you in my head isn’t so different from the person you are.”

“I tried to run away on you,” Finn points out. “Like, at least three times.”

“You’re just as human as the rest of us,” Poe repeats Finn’s very wise words, giving him an easy smile as he reaches out and holds onto his shoulder, squeezing it so he has something to hold onto. “You hear me? I love you, Finn. The man you are, and if you give me some time, I’m pretty sure nothing’s gonna stop me falling for you.”

Finn is staring to the side, but his lips are curved up with a tentative, hopeful smile. It’s like he’s trying not to stare at Poe in case he does and bursts into an uncontrollable grin. At least, that’s Poe’s thinking given that he’s doing some awfully big grinning right now.

“After the ceremony,” Poe says, “I think we should go out for dinner and really find out who we are as people. You and me, and Rey if she wants to join,” he makes sure to offer, knowing how Rey’s come to take solace in their company.

“Maybe just you and me to start. I’ve got my own ideas about you I need to figure out, but I don’t think they’re so far off either. I’m just surprised the man I know hasn’t already had his heart taken,” he jokes.

“What can I say?” Poe quips back. “I was waiting for the right one to come along.”

Poe understands that they’ve both got blood in their past – spilt and given – and maybe it’s not about being a perfect vision, but it’s about living up to be the best person you can be, despite the mistakes you might have made.

Finn is just the latest person he’s met who makes him want to rise above his weaknesses and be the best man he can be, but he’s also the one Poe wants at his side while he figures it out.

* * *

Weeks later, Poe finds Finn standing by the sleek black wall they’ve put up on the outskirts of the base, with names engraved to try and make up for the sacrifice of lives. Finn’s thumb works the grooves of the engravings, his gaze fixed on Slip’s name, intermingled with the rest of the Resistance’s heroes that gave their lives for the battle.

Poe takes Finn’s hand in his to offer him support, squeezing gently. “You think he’d be okay with this?”

“Probably not,” Finn admits with a wry laugh, “but I think with enough time, I could’ve shown him why it mattered so much.” He gives Poe a look that seems to hold a thousand ideas and plans in it, like he’s been thinking about this for a while. “I can’t be the only one who knows what we were doing in the First Order was wrong, Poe.”

“Are you telling me we’re gonna go infiltrate the First Order so I can find more men like you? My body’s only got so much stamina,” Poe quips, even though he knows Finn’s dead serious. “But for you, I’m willing to do anything.”

“I think he would’ve liked you,” Finn says, when they’re finished lighting candles and leaving flowers in memoriam. “Everyone likes you,” he goes on, like Poe’s got some magical power that does it. “He couldn’t hit a target to save his life, though.”

“We’re all human,” Poe reminds Finn, living in Finn’s hypothetical ‘what if’ world. “We would have made it work.”

For the sake of all the names on that wall, Poe knows they’ll make it work. They have a war to win to honor their fallen heroes, to make their sacrifices worthwhile. Mortality just means they’ve got less time to do good deeds in, but it doesn’t mean those deeds have to be anything less than monumental. 

“So how about another dinner? I’d like to get past that bit where you don’t kiss on a first date,” Finn suggests.

And sometimes, the little things feel just as monumental, like falling in love with a former Stormtrooper and making amends for the past.

“Did I say second? I must have meant third…”

Finn’s groan makes Poe grin with delight as they make their way towards dinner. No matter what happens from here, they’ll make their lives a good one. Poe’s going to make sure of it.


End file.
